The Marketing Working Group has been tackling the issue of updating the Open edX Marketplace. This is a significant point of engagement for prospective customers and people/organizations interested in the Open edX platform and Open edX Providers. We want to start by updating the categories used on these pages.
We currently have the following categories:
Open edX Service Providers
Technology Providers
Other Providers
These categories might be confusing to prospective customers and may not fully capture the nature of providersā services. How would you recommend we change them?
The following ideas have been discussed:
Segment by services provided (e.g. Installation and Development, Hosting, Content Development, etc.)
Shift away from provider-focused terminology and focus more on customer-interests
Utilize the filters or a lead questionnaire to eliminate these categories entirely
How would you recommend adjusting these categories and updating this page?
@ayazquraishi +1 to reworking these categories - they are definitely confusing currently, and not just to prospective users. I also canāt really tell what the difference between āservice providersā and ātechnology providersā is meant to be
Your two first proposals seem right - and imho they are quite close to each other? Customer interests tend to split among the lines of the categories you listed in your first point (though maybe the exact words used could vary):
Awesome points, @antoviaque. I agree that we can segment by service and get away from provider-focused terminology.
One challenge I see is that different providers might be using different terminology for similar services, so we need to be direct and consistent in how we present this info. At least with regards to hosting, Iāve seen āon-premiseā and ācloud-based solutionā used as industry standards but I am not sure that hosting is the main decision-making criteria for all prospective clients.
A good question to ask as a provider is: what all do you do for Open edX for your clients? For example, at Edly we may say that we:
Install/implement and upgrade the preferred Open edX release for clients
Integrate third party applications with the clientās Open edX instance
Provide Managed Hosting and hosting transfer services for the clientās Open edX instance
Provide instructional design, content authoring, and Open edX data migration services
So categorically, we could say that we provide: installation services, integration services, hosting services, and content development services.
Are these accurate to what you provide too? Any thoughts from other providers?
Iām also +1 on reworking the presentation here. We want to be using the language of our customers and reaching to their understanding.
We might even be able to make this slightly interactive. āI want toā¦ā āHave my own copy of Open edX to use and customizeā, āBuild a new course from scratch with help from experienced online instructorsā, āMake a new kind of interactive problem for Open edXā, āCustomize the look and feel of my Open edX instanceā, āCreate an altogether new learning experience that doesnāt follow the standard structure of a course with units and sectionsā,
And then each of these might have different further questions until they arrive at a list of providers and a way to reach out to them which contains the information they filled out in the walkthrough.
Yes, an interactive lead form is definitely a great suggestion and itās being considered. It will likely be easier for providers to list out the services they provide than for customers to try and figure out who to pick. This assumes that every customer would complete the form; if they donāt we could always fall back on the service categories as well.
